More than 200 armed federal agents and snipers were deployed on Tuesday to forcibly remove the cattle of a Nevada rancher - signaling a dangerous escalation in the two-decade long constitutional land dispute over an endangered tortoise.

Cliven Bundy, the last rancher in Clark County, Nevada, has been battling the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) since 1993 when he refused to pay for the right to graze on the 600,000-acre Gold Butte land he says his family have owned since the 1870s.

Claiming that the government has 'brought everything but tanks and rocket launchers', Bundy said his livelihood is being taken away from him by agents carrying, 'Automatic weapons, sniper rifles, top communication, top surveillance.''The battle’s been going on for 20 years,' Bundy told theWashington Free Beacon from his ranch 75 miles outside of Las Vegas.

'What’s happened the last two weeks, the United States government, the bureaus are getting this army together and they’re going to get their job done and they’re going to prove two things.

'They’re going to prove they can do it, and they’re gonna prove that they have unlimited power, and that they control the policing power over this public land. That’s what they’re trying to prove.'

Two of Nevada’s top elected leaders are riding to the rescue of a rancher whose decades-long range war with the federal government has reached a boiling point in recent days.

The federal Bureau of Land Management has surrounded the Clark County ranch of Cliven Bundy with armed officers, helicopters and four-wheel drive vehicles. Last week, they began seizing cattle found grazing on adjacent federal lands in violation of a law meant to protect an endangered desert tortoise.

Both Gov. Brian Sandoval and Sen. Dean Heller have condemned the BLS for what they characterize as heavy-handed actions involving Bundy and other Silver State residents.

“No cow justifies the atmosphere of intimidation which currently exists nor the limitation of constitutional rights that are sacred to all Nevadans,” Sandoval, a Republican, said. “The BLM needs to reconsider its approach to this matter and act accordingly.”

Heller, also a Republican, said he told BLM Director Neil Kornze the situation is being handled poorly.

“I told him very clearly that law-abiding Nevadans must not be penalized by an over-reaching BLM,” Heller said.

Bundy, 67, who has been a rancher all his life, told FoxNews.com last week he believes the federal agency is trying to push him to the breaking point and likened his situation to the 1993 disaster in Waco, Texas, in which federal and state law enforcement agencies laid siege to a compound of religious fanatics calling themselves Branch Davidians, a move that resulted in the deaths of 76.

“This is a lot bigger deal than just my cows,” Bundy told FoxNews.com. “It’s a statement for freedom and liberty and the Constitution.”

The fight involves a 600,000-acre area under BLM control called Gold Butte, near the Utah border. The vast and rugged land is the habitat of the protected desert tortoise, and ranchers whose cattloe graze there must pay fees. Bundy, a descendant of Mormons who settled in Bunkerville more than 140 years ago, claims an inherent right to graze the area and casts the conflict as a states' rights issue. He said he doesn't recognize federal authority on land that he insists belongs to Nevada.

BLM spokeswoman Kirsten Cannon said agents on Saturday and Sunday rounded up 134 of an estimated 900 trespassing cattle in a vast 1,200-square-mile area of rangeland northeast of Las Vegas and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Cannon said the roundup was a last resort and blamed Cliven Bundy for "inflammatory statements," including vows to fight and characterizations of the cow removal as a range war.

"Mr. Bundy has been in trespass on public lands for more than 20 years," Cannon said, adding that he owes the federal government some $1.1 million in unpaid grazing fees.

The bureau last week announced the area would be closed through May 12 while contractors conduct the roundup using helicopters, vehicles and temporary pens. Cannon said the agency paid the contractors $966,000.

Bundy's son, Dave Bundy, 37, was arrested Sunday for refusing to disperse as the roundup began, but freed the next day.

Federal officials tried to round up Bundy's livestock two years ago, but he refused to budge.

Since then, he has lost two federal court rulings — and a judge last October prohibited him from physically interfering with any seizure or roundup operation.

Federal officials said BLM enforcement agents were dispatched in response to statements Bundy made that the agency perceived as threats.

“When threats are made that could jeopardize the safety of the American people, the contractors and our personnel; we have the responsibility to provide law enforcement to account for their safety,” National Park Service spokeswoman Christie Vanover told reporters Sunday.

The trouble started when Bundy stopped paying grazing fees in 1993. He said he didn't have to because his Mormon ancestors worked the land since the 1880s, giving him rights to the land.

“We own this land,” he said, not the feds. He said he is willing to pay grazing fees but only to Clark County, not BLM.“Years ago, I used to have 52 neighboring ranchers,” he said. “I’m the last man standing. How come? Because BLM regulated these people off the land and out of business.”

While it isn’t (yet) a Second Amendment issue, numerous readers have asked us to keep an eye on the situation 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas, where a confrontation twenty years in the making seems to be quickly approaching a possible flashpoint.

Cliven Bundy’s family has been raising cattle on public lands in Clark County more than 140 years. The family claims longstanding grazing rights to remote public lands which the family says that they have continually improved since then. The federal government, represented by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) the Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI) and unknown contractors are in the process of capturing 900 cattle belong to Bundy on the disputed land, which will them be sold, effectively putting the last ranch in Clark County out of business.

Militias head to Nevada rancher’s standoff with feds: We’re not ‘afraid to shoot’

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s decades-long battle against the federal government over grazing rights has heated to the point where militia groups have joined in and taken up spots against the feds who’ve circled his land — and talk is, they’re not afraid to open fire.

A spokesman for the one of the militia groups said as much to local 8 News Now: I’m not “afraid to shoot,” he said.

Margaret Houston, Mr. Bundy’s sister and a cancer survivor, said at a town hall gathering this week that the situation “was like a war zone” and that she felt “like I was not in the United States,” The Daily Mail reported.The Las Vegas Review-Journal described it this way: “Serious bloodshed was narrowly avoided,” in a story about how dogs were unleashed on a woman who was pregnant while the rancher’s son was hit with a taser.

On Tuesday, armed Bureau of Land Management agents stormed Mr. Bundy’s property, escalating a court dispute that’s wound for two decades over the rancher’s refusal to pay for grazing fees.

Mr. Bundy’s view is that he owns his property — that it’s been in his family’s hands for centuries — and he doesn’t have to pay for his own 900-head of cattle to graze on the 600,000 acre Gold Butte property.The government, meanwhile, says the land belongs to it, and agents have swooped and circled, closing off roadway access to the property and flying helicopters overhead the family’s home.

Following the agent occupation, one of Mr. Bundy’s sons, Ammon Bundy, was tasered by a federal official to the point that blood seeped through his shirt, video showed. Ms. Houston, meanwhile, said she was roughed up and manhandled by authorities, telling town hall attendees that she was “hit from the back; it was like a football tackle” and that “they just took me and threw me down to the ground,” The Daily Mail reported.

BLM, for its part, says the situation only turned violent when protesters who rallied to the family’s defense kicked a K-9 unit officer.

Now militia groups are on the scene, promising to help the Bundys keep up the fight.

“This is what we do, we provide armed response,” Jim Lordy, with Operation Mutual Aid, told the local broadcast station. “They have guns. We need guns to protect ourselves from the tyrannical government.”

Mr. Lordy also said “many more” militia groups are coming to the site to join in the Bundy family defense.

“They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” another member told the Review-Journal.

Self-styled militia members and ultra-conservatives rallied on Friday to the cause of a defiant rancher accused by the U.S. government of illegally grazing his cattle for decades on public lands in the southern Nevada desert.

The showdown between rancher Cliven Bundy and U.S. land managers has brought a team of armed federal rangers to Nevada to seize his 1,000 head of cattle in an unusual roundup that has become a flashpoint for anti-government groups, right-wing politicians and gun-rights activists.

Bob Diehl, head of a group calling itself the Southern Nevada Militia, based in Mesquite, Nevada, estimated that as many as 1,500 supporters turned out Friday to protest the government seizure of Bundy's livestock from 600,000 acres of federal range and park lands that he has claimed as his own property.

The dispute has tapped into long-simmering anger in Nevada and other big Western states rooted in the fact that vast tracts of their land are owned and governed by federal agencies, much of it by the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management, or BLM.

"Many of us are here for the same reason. It's not about cattle, it's not about land, it's about bringing the constitution back to the people," Diehl said.

Diehl said many who believe the federal government has overreached its authority by intervening in states' rights in such areas as guns, land use and marriage laws have come to see the Bundy Ranch and the forced roundup as "the last stand for American independence."

The gathering of rancher Cliven Bundy's cattle in northeast Clark County has been stopped by the director of the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM announcement came as Bundy was supposed to meet with Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie about the week-long dispute.

There was no confirmation of a deal between Bundy and the BLM that may have also involved the sheriff. Bundy refused to speak with a News 3 reporter who went to his ranch this morning.

The BLM had been using contract cowboys to round up Bundy's 900 head of cattle that have been grazing over 600,000 square acres in northeast Clark County for more than 20 years without his payment of grazing fees.

As of Friday they had secure 389 cattle from the Gold Butte area, nearly 90 percent of them marked with the Bundy Ranch brand.

The BLM said it decided to end the roundup because it was concerned about the safety of its workers and the public. BLM Rangers and Bundy family and supporters of were involved in a scuffle. Cliven Bundy's son, Ammon Bundy, was tased twice by federal agents. Another Bundy relative was thrown to the ground by an officer.

Safety concerns grew daily as Bundy supporters and militia-type people continued to arrive from around the country.

All of the public land closed for the cattle roundup have been reopened, the BLM said today.

The mainstream media is making it sound like some sort of deal was struck. In reality the militiamen, protesters and supporters of the Bundy family forced the Bureau of Land Management to release the cows they stole by confronting them. Even threats of violence from armed government goons failed to stop Bundy's supporters from eventually taking back the cattle. This situation is far from over though. It is pretty much guaranteed that the federal government will return when there are fewer people and the story is no longer featured in the news cycle.

BLM attempted cover-up of Sen. Reid/Chinese gov’t takeover of ranch for solar farm﻿The Bureau of Land Management, whose director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser, has purged documents from its web site stating that the agency wants Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s cattle off of the land his family has worked for over 140 years in order to make way for solar panel power stations.

The first segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

Deleted from BLM.gov but reposted for posterity by the Free Republic, the BLM document entitled “Cattle Trespass Impacts” directly states that Bundy’s cattle “impacts” solar development, more specifically the construction of “[url=http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/nv/field_offices/las_vegas_field_office/energy/dry_lake_sez.Par.3790.File.dat/FAQs Oct2012.pdf]utility-scale solar power generation facilities[/url]” on “public lands.”

“Non-Governmental Organizations have expressed concern that the regional mitigation strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone utilizes Gold Butte as the location for offsite mitigation for impacts from solar development, and that those restoration activities are not durable with the presence of trespass cattle,” the document states.

The second segment of the document pulled by the feds from BLM.gov.

Another BLM report entitled Regional Mitigation Strategy for the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone (BLM Technical Note 444) reveals that Bundy’s land in question is within the “Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area” which is part of a broad U.S. Department of Energy program for “Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States” on land “managed” by BLM.

“In 2012, the BLM and the U.S. Department of Energy published the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States,” the report reads. “The Final Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement assessed the impact of utility-scale solar energy development on public lands in the six southwestern states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.”

Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone and surrounding area (Click to enlarge.)

“The Approved Resource Management Plan Amendments/Record of Decision (ROD) for Solar Energy Development in Six Southwestern States implemented a comprehensive solar energy program for public lands in those states and incorporated land use allocations and programmatic and SEZ-specific design features into land use plans in the six-state study area.”

My colleague Renee Nal pointed out yesterday that the federal government itself has been complicit in plans to euthanize hundreds of Desert Tortoises, the endangered species supposedly at the center of the just-ended cattle-ranch standoff in Nevada.

That’s one part of a bigger picture involving the corruption-ridden, taxpayer-dependent solar industry. But this story isn’t the one you may have seen already, about Harry Reid and the Chinese energy firm ENN. I actually think that story is off-base, as we’ll see below. What the hounding of Cliven Bundy is about instead is the interests involved in a solar farm that is connected with the grazing area for Cliven Bundy’s cattle.

There’s a whole separate argument to be made about property rights, size of government, government versus the property owner, etc. Along with Kevin D. Williamson, who has put a nice downpayment on that discussion at National Review, LU’s Nate and Renee (again) have put down markers. More on this in the days ahead.

But this other matter needs to be addressed first. There’s been a widely disseminated report (see link above) that the Bundy family is being hounded with special vigor right now because of a solar-farm project involving Chinese firm ENN, whose chief counsel in the USA is Harry Reid’s son, Rory Reid. Much of the background reporting in that story is correct, including the fact that the Bureau of Land Management’s current director moved to that job from a position on Harry Reid’s staff. The BLM study objecting to the Bundy cattle, and tying it to a “mitigation proposal” for solar-energy projects, is also relevant.

It’s just not relevant to the Chinese-backed solar project. ENN dropped that project in June of 2013. It’s no longer an active proposal, nor does the area for the project fall within one of the 17 “solar energy zones” (SEZs) designated by the Department of the Interior in 2012.

Bundy does not recognize federal authority over land where his ancestors first settled in the 1880s, which he claims belongs to the state of Nevada. The Bureau of Land Management disagreed and took him to federal court, which first ruled in favor of the BLM in 1998. After years of attempts at a negotiated settlement over the $1.2 million Bundy owes in fees failed, federal land agents began seizing hundreds of his cattle illegally grazing on public land last week.

But after footage of a BLM agent using a stun gun on Bundy's adult son went viral in far-right circles, hundreds of armed militia supporters from neighboring states flocked to Bundy's ranch to defend him from the BLM agents enforcing the court order. The states'-rights groups, in echoes of Ruby Ridge and Waco, came armed and prepared for violence. "I'm ready to pull the trigger if fired upon," one of the anti-government activists told Reuters. Not eager to spill blood over cattle, the BLM backed down Sunday and started returning the livestock it had confiscated. The agency says it won't drop the matter and will "continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially."

Federalism—genuine states' rights—is perhaps more familiar to Nevadans than to any other state's denizens. To boost the state's ailing economy in the early 20th century, Nevada exploited the federal architecture of American law to create uniquely permissive laws on divorce, gambling, and prostitution, bringing in much-needed tourism revenue and giving the state a distinctive libertarian character. Just this weekend, the state Republican Party dropped statements opposing abortion and same-sex marriage from its platform at their convention, bucking the party's national stance.

But Bundy's understanding of states' rights is far different. As he told Sean Hannity in an interview last week (emphasis added):

Quote :

Well, you know, my cattle is only one issue—that the United States courts has ordered that the government can seize my cattle. But what they have done is seized Nevada statehood, Nevada law, Clark County public land, access to the land, and have seized access to all of the other rights of Clark County people that like to go hunting and fishing. They've closed all those things down, and we're here to protest that action. And we are after freedom. We're after liberty. That's what we want.

Bundy's claim that the land belongs to Nevada or Clark County didn't hold up in court, nor did his claim of inheriting an ancestral right to use the land that pre-empts the BLM's role. "We definitely don't recognize [the BLM director's] jurisdiction or authority, his arresting power or policing power in any way," Bundy told his supporters, according to The Guardian.

His personal grievance with federal authority doesn't stop with the BLM, though. "I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada," Bundy said in a radio interview last Thursday. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing." Ironically, this position directly contradicts Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution:

Quote :

All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people; and they have the right to alter or reform the same whenever the public good may require it. But the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States. The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed forcein compelling obedience to its Authority.

The paramount-allegiance clause, a product of the era in which Nevada gained statehood, originated in Nevada's first (and unofficial) constitutional convention of 1863. Some 3,000 miles to the east, the Civil War raged between the federal government in the North and West and the rebellion that had swallowed the South. In early 1864, Abraham Lincoln—who wanted more pro-Union states in Congress so as to pass the amendment to abolish slavery, and a few more electoral votes to guarantee his reelection that fall—signed a bill authorizing Nevada to convene an official constitutional convention for statehood. The state constitution's framers, who were overwhelmingly Unionist, retained the clause in solidarity with the Union when they gathered in July 1864.

Nevada isn't the only state with a paramount-allegiance clause. Republicans added similar clauses to Reconstruction-era state constitutions throughout the South, although few survived subsequent revisions after federal troops departed. Even the states that retain the phrase "paramount allegiance" today, like North Carolina and Mississippi, don't share Nevada's explicit constitutional openness toward armed federal intervention to enforce it.

That pro-federal sentiment also guided Nevada's first congressional delegation when it arrived in the nation's capital in early 1865. William Stewart, the Silver State's first senator, proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865 that would've enshrined a weaker form of the paramount allegiance clause at the federal level:

Quote :

First—The Union of the States, under this constitution, is indissoluble, and no State can absolve its citizens from the obligation of paramount allegiance to the United States.Second—No engagement made, or obligation incurred by any State, or by any number of States, or by any county, city, or any other municipal corporation to subvert, impair, or resist the authority of the United States, or to support or aid any legislative convention or body in hostility to such authority, shall ever be held, voted, or be assumed or sustained, in whole or part, by any State or by the United States.

This proposed amendment—which would have resolved secession's constitutionality for all time—did not succeed. The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White in 1869 that secession had been unconstitutional and that "the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states." Stewart nevertheless left his mark on the Constitution the same year as White, when he wrote what would become the Fifteenth Amendment, guaranteeing black suffrage.

Two decades after Nevada's founders proclaimed unswerving obedience to federal authority, Cliven Bundy's family first settled the land where he and his supporters now make their heavily armed stand against federal power. It's doubtful even the Nevada Constitution will change their minds—if legal and constitutional arguments could persuade the militia movement, there might not be a militia movement.

A Nevada rancher who became a conservative folk hero for standing up to the US government in a fight over grazing rights lost some of his staunch defenders after wondering aloud whether blacks might have had it better under slavery.

Republican politicians from around the country who have rallied to Cliven Bundy's defence in recent weeks denounced the comments and distanced themselves from the rancher, including potential 2016 presidential contender Senator Rand Paul and Nevada senator Dean Heller. Democrats were quick to pounce on the comments and label Bundy a racist.

Bundy has gone from a little-known rancher and melon farmer in rural Nevada to a national political star since he resisted the federal government's attempts to round up his cattle from federal land because he hadn't paid grazing fees for two decades.

His supporters, especially those on the right, have praised him for standing up to what they believe is a heavy-handed federal government, and several armed militia members travelled to his ranch to back Bundy.

His comments were first published in The New York Times on Wednesday, but he did little to tamp down the controversy as he sought to address the public outrage on Thursday.